God the omnipotent wearied of space,
And the void of endless blue,
And the light of eternity in His face,
And eternity's emptiness round the place
That the presence of Godhead knew.
So He wove Him a piece of tapestry
O'er all infinity drawn,
And out of His brain and its subtlety
Were the suns that stand, and the comets that flee,
And the paths of the planets born.
No plan too great, no design too small,
For the fingers of God the Lord,
The joy of invention lived through all,
From the orbit curve of the earthly ball
To the shell where sound is stored.
And all continued as they were made,
Clean cast from Perfection's brain,
Not a beam of light from its circle strayed,
But the whole the heavenly laws obeyed,
—God looked, and wearied again.
So He wove Him a piece of tapestry
With fingers thrice refined,
And He mingled the threads with subtlety,
The threads of our human destiny,
And the light with the dark He twined.
For shadow and shine were mingled there,
And white was matched with red,
And the thread of the silver gleamed more fair
For the gloom that, surrounding, made it rare;
And God in His wisdom said:
"Of my handiwork but the human soul
Can suffer the laws of change,
That only errs from my set control,
And takes in pleasure, and pays in toll,
The whole of its passion's range.
"But who shall judge or who condemn
This work that my hands have made,
For the thread that here appears a gem,
—So have I mingled and twisted them—
Is there the gleam of a blade?
"Nor evil nor good exists for me,
As I mingle strand with strand;
The past is the visible tapestry,
The present I weave, and the destiny
Of the future is in my hand.
"And the past and the future both are met
In the present's history;
For the thread I hold is unbroken yet,
And the thing I weave is unguessed at yet,
In this human tapestry."